Husband moving to Dubai without us.

[PolyplaxSerrata]

Has anyone on here got any experience of their spouse moving abroad for work without them?
This is a decision based on the financial benefits and neither of us are happy about it but have discussed it, and are willing to live apart for the two years required.
We have two teenage children and I have a job I love in the UK, and I didn't enjoy Dubai when we visited a few years ago.
I don't want to live there.
Is anyone else in this situation?
How do you cope?
I know I'm going to resent having to sort out all the kids and house stuff while DH gets to just look after himself, but financially we will pay off the house and be comfortable.
If others who have some this have any suggestions or tips, I'd be grateful.
Our marriage is pretty good and I trust DH as much as you can trust anyone. He's not a party person and doesn't drink or do drugs, but enjoys exploring new places. He doesn't make new friends easily, and I worry he'll actually be a bit lonely.

Just a suggestion. You could book parental leave so that you get 4 extra weeks off work each year to enable you to spend more time visiting him with the kids. Might make it more doable.

Don't do it op. I used to work in the Middle East and the place is full of ex pat married men living the single life. No matter how much you trust him, you won't be there and men compartmentalise. He'll have his life there and his life at home.

Paying the mortgage off is just not worth it imo.

I know people over the years who've done this and also who've taken the family. The main issue that's cropped up is nearly always that one wants to stay at the end of the period and the other doesn't despite there being a timeframe agreed beforehand. That's split a few families in the end. A few men developing drink problems as well- though they probably had the propensity to become drinkers to start with. If you're sure he'll come home at the end of the 2 years then it is doable.

There's a Netflix documentary with a married footballer who did it and left his wife and kids at home, and he ended up having a whole separate additional family. They both cheated.

How much is the additional money each year? It’s quite hard to tell from your post the sort of quantum and therefore the weighing up of the benefits of the money v the disruption.

It wouldn’t be for me and DH, we’ve hardly spent mainly nights away from each other apart from short hospital stays. But we do know a family who have done this and it worked well, although when DH came back, the wife had got used to making all the decisions herself and quite liked the quiet life. But yes, some 15 years later they are still together.

I think this is definitely something to consider. We were apart for only 4 months and adjusting to being back together was harder than being apart. You get used to the freedom of being able to stick to your own routine and it's actually hard having somebody back all the time with a different take on the routines.

We have done it for two years but will be stopping this summer. Travel back every 6 weeks for a week WFH.

It's emotionally hard and can be very lonely. Working hours are very long.

Making friends there can distract from family in the UK so needs to be balanced.

There is an emotional cost at both ends. It's also very expensive, you need to check rental prices there and food and drinks prices to know how much money you need. Flying back and forth costs a lot too.

Slightly different perspective here, but I think it is more normalised in different cultures. It can work, as others have said - armed forces, oil rigs, overseas placements. But you need to agree the family ground rules up front. What days are Teams/Zoom calls for you all? How will you meet up in between full visits home/Dubai? How do you want to use the time together? What if the kids want to spend time out there? What extras need to be put in at home to make it work? What happens to the extra cash etc?

He may hate it and come home anyway. But plenty of people world wide make it work, there is no reason why you can't.

'can work, as others have said - armed forces, oil rigs'

Working off shore is very different. In Dubai there is a very active ex pat party community. Lots of singletons, lots of married men. There is not a chance I'd want my dh to work there with me sat at home. Either the family goes or no one goes imo.

DH and I did this for 5 years, with me in DXB and him in the UK. It was easily the best time of my life and our happiest years of marriage. Work was full-on for both of us, so we were just good for nothing during the weeks anyway. We met at least once a month in a new city, exploring new places and had fabulous luxury holidays. The tax free salary made a massive difference to our financial security and lifestyle. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

HOWEVER we had no DC at the time and I made plans to move home to the UK as soon as I was pregnant with DS. I think having kids makes a huge difference.

Very few people only do two years btw. It’s easy to get used to the cash and lifestyle.

It's horses for courses (or whatever the saying is).

I have friends where the husband lives in the middle east for work, and they get together every couple of months either here, there, or somewhere else.

I have a friend whose husband got a job in Dubai, they all moved out there, she hated it, the kids and she came back to the UK for six months, then they all went back out to live in Saudi.

For me, personally, I hate it when DH or I have to spend a week working away (several times a year each) and can't imagine not being in our family unit day-to-day.

Is the money really worth the impact on family life?

What if he doesn't want to come home after 2 years living the single life and making big bucks?

My friends husband did this. Then 4 months later announced he wanted a divorce because he'd found himself a girlfriend. :(

This! Earning loads, a glossy, fun, party environment. What could possibly go wrong..

Tbh, it doesn't have to be Dubai, my XH took a job at the other end of the UK and that helped me make my decision to split, but that was mostly because he'd come home for two days in every fortnight and lie on the couch doing nothing with the kids and not helping in the house.

I have friends where her DH went out to Dubai to work, and now they've all moved out to be with him and seem perfectly happy. So if your marriage is sound, go for it. If you have even the slightest suspicion that you will be happier without him or that he will come back a slob and expect you to be grateful for his presence - don't.

I'm curious, what is the financial renumeration like, to make this worth it? OP, or anyone else, like to share?

From experience there is probably less than a 50:50 chance that your relationship will survive this without being fundamentally negatively changed. That's being optimistic if anything.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a married couple being split like this for more than a temporary period (1 year max) without one or both sides being enormously resentful to the extent it's hard to recover from, or one or both sides cheating. Note I'm not including fly in / fly out contracts in that because there there's no new 'home'.

One party moving to the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi or Qatar and the other saying at home - it rarely works. Sometimes it's resentment, sometimes it's a measure of existing weaknesses in the relationship, but (and knowing I'll get accused of mumsnet bingo) most of the time it's because the partner working away cheats. Sometimes the partner at home but given they're left with the kids normally they don't have the same opportunity.

And in that one hand count, I can only think of two cases where hearing of material relationship issues would be a shock.

I say this after over 10 years in the GCC and having seen this set up time and time again. The only time I would do it would be if we could make a genuinely life changing amount of money in a very short period of time, or in a job loss situation where we had no other option.

I also really doubt the package in Dubai is as good as you both think it is when you account for the costs and the lack of UK benefits (eg no employer pension contribution). Dubai doesn't pay at that level anymore because it's not considered a hardship destination - it's very easy to get someone to move to Dubai outside of some very niche areas (which usually also pay top notch in the UK). Saudi or Kuwait might.

Dh worked abroad for two periods of at least a year on a ‘bachelor’ basis. Dds were at least teens both times.
I visited him twice in one location, and while in the other he managed to get home for a weekend every couple of months.

TBH it was fine* - except that two of his elderly relatives were deteriorating, one mentally, one physically, so much of that fell on me.

*I do make an exception for the night I was still doing paperwork at about 1 am, when I noticed water dripping through the dining room ceiling! 😱
Emergency plumber said ‘Stick the point of a sharp knife through it, love, with a bucket underneath - I’ll be round tomorrow.’
The water whooshed out! But he did fix it.

I could never accept my husband moving away from the family, even with regular visits.

The pay doesn't really matter - he would spend too much time away from the kids and my kids would miss out on emotional warmth they can only get by physical proximity.

I think if a short time in the ME is needed to pay off mortgages or whatever then Saudi would be better. The lifestyle is much less extravagant and wild. Yes the place is full of married men too living their single Middle East lifestyles and expat communities are very active but there's less opportunity to blow earnings like there is in Dubai.

For the extra earned in Dubai it'll soon be spent keeping up.

My dad did this when I was growing up. It was fine. I think it can be easier to manage teenagers on your own sometimes as you have less people to worry about keeping happy. If it's only for a few years you'll make it through with nice holidays and a secure future to look forward to.

A friend of a friends partner done this years ago for a job in Cyprus.
He didn't come back.
Luckily they didn't have kids or married.
Still awful.
And my own aunty did it she went to Turkey for work she found out life was easier on her own its been over 20 years she still hasn't come home.
Shes now married.

I know a guy who did this, and he estimated that about 75% of the guys who went over to places like this used prostitutes.